All the Colors of the Dark

Patch continues to visit Marty but gets no answers. He tries to stay out of any prison fights and is friendly with a large, kind guard named Blackjack, who was a guard at his previous prison.

Things are tense between Norma and Saint. Norma finally tells her that she would have an easier time with Charlotte if she stayed with Jimmy. She also accuses Saint of driving Jimmy away. Saint wants to tell the truth about his abuse but can’t bring herself to do so. When Charlotte stays out too late on a date, Saint finds her, and they fight, exchanging hurtful words. Charlotte tells Saint that she isn’t her mother, and Saint responds that she doesn’t want to be. Charlotte accuses her of killing her baby, and Saint tells her the truth about Jimmy. The girl flees in horror.

Saint and her friends search all night for Charlotte. She finally finds her in the Mad House, watching a news broadcast about a girl found because of one of Patch’s paintings. It is Eloise Strike, whose brother, Cooper, is the librarian. Saint kneels beside Charlotte and gently begins to tell her that Patch hurt Jimmy because he knew he was abusive. However, Sammy interrupts and tells them Norma had a heart attack. In the ICU, Saint holds her grandmother’s hand and cries, telling her she loves her and that she wishes they had more time.

Sammy visits Patch in prison, promising to keep looking after Saint and Charlotte. Patch continues to visit Tooms, pressing him but getting no answers. Tooms tells him about his first love, and Patch assumes it is a woman, but the person he describes resembles Nix. He finally admits that he knows something and will tell Patch when he sees him again. However, Patch is devastated to realize that Tooms’s execution is in two weeks.

At the end of Norma’s funeral, a grieving Saint gets a call from Sister Cecile, telling her that Aaron came back to the church. Using surveillance video, they get plates from the van and find him in Miami. He has taken a young woman. Saint can reach her in time, and though she doesn’t catch Aaron, she saves the woman’s life.

A group of gang members tries to kill Patch as part of their initiation. He reluctantly fights them, knowing that it will land him in trouble. In solitary confinement, one of the boys from the fight, named Tom, talks to Patch through the bars. During the conversation, he mentions the painting from the warden’s office, saying that he knows the town—Grace Falls, Alabama.

The warden sentences Tom to solitary and revokes Patch’s library privileges. As he is putting the books away, he finds a letter addressed to Richie in the book belonging to Tooms. When Sammy visits, he passes the letter to the other man. Sammy tells him that it has been a privilege to know him and that he still has time to do another good thing.

In Monta Clare, Saint and Charlotte clear the land behind the house for a studio for Charlotte’s art. They discover some bones buried deep in the soil. Saint receives a call that Richie Montrose has been murdered. He was shot in his living room, and on the table next to him was a letter that said they would see Richie in hell. It is the letter that Tooms wrote, which Nix delivered. He was seen on the security cameras entering Richie’s house.

When Saint goes to arrest him, he does not try to resist. He tells her it isn’t his story to tell but eludes her at the last moment and dies by suicide, sparing her.

Patch orchestrates an escape from prison. Cooper, who pretends to be held hostage in the library, and Blackjack, who pretends not to recognize Patch in Cooper’s outfit as he leaves, as well as fellow inmate Tug, who starts a fight, help him.

Himes calls Saint and asks her to lead the search. She does so, but first, she finds Charlotte and tells her the news. Charlotte and Saint finally apologize for the fight they had long ago, and Charlotte holds Saint’s hand and tells her that she has never come first with her father. It has always been about Grace.

The FBI questions the prisoners and searches around the prison but finds no trace of him. Tug tricks the warden by saying that Patch had a girlfriend in North Dakota, knowing he is sending him in the opposite direction.

While Patch makes his way to Alabama, Saint begins to piece together the mystery. An expert tells her the bones she and Charlotte found were dog bones and gives her a collar labeled “Scout.” She realizes Tooms was telling the truth about looking for a dog. She also realizes that the bees killed the dog, and her grandmother buried it secretly, not wanting to upset her.

Saint interviews Cooper and realizes his connection to Patch. She also interviews the construction worker who cut the prison’s electric line and sees that Patch also painted his daughter. She visits Nix’s home, which he left to her, and finds all his old photos. She sees photos of him and Tooms together and realizes that they were lovers. She also finds a letter with her name on it, telling her that Tooms is innocent.

Panicking because Tooms is due to be executed, she calls all her contacts and asks them to stay the execution. She drives frantically to the prison but almost doesn’t make it in time. In desperation, she fires her gun in the air to force people to pay attention and let her inside.

Tooms and Saint sit together after the stay of execution. They go over the facts of what happened, and everything is finally in the open. Tooms explains that he saw Aaron hanging around the girls and went to his house to warn him off, which is why his DNA was in the house. However, Aaron told him he was watching him and knew that he was performing illegal abortions. The night Saint found Tooms with blood on his hands, Callie had just died from a hemorrhage. Nix did not know that Tooms had been breaking the law but understood why he did it and refused to call the police. Instead, he buried Callie in her garden, safe from disturbance. Tooms sent the letter to Richie hoping to let him know that he hadn’t gotten away entirely and someone knew what he’d done. He didn’t realize that Nix would kill him, believing that Tooms was dying too. He also admits he lied about killing Grace in the hopes that it would give Patch enough closure to move on with his life. He feels guilty for doing this.

Patch calls the house and gets Charlotte. He tells her that Grace Falls is a real place and that he is going there. Unbeknownst to them, Himes put a tracker on Saint’s phone, and they know where Patch is headed. Saint rushes to get there in time to save him.

Patch eats at a diner in Grace Falls and describes the house. The waitress tells him where it is, and when he finds it, he is struck by how similar it is to his own Mad House, though it is falling apart and decaying. He makes his way inside and sits in tears but feels a familiar hand in his. He and Grace have found each other at last.

In prison, Tom cracks in solitary and confesses to the warden that he knows where Patch is headed. Himes calls Saint to tell her that the local police department and Alabama state troopers are coming. She rushes to find the house first, as the police go door to door in Grace Falls. They question the diner waitress, but she claims to have never seen Patch.

Grace explains that she begged Aaron to let them stay in the house because she hoped Patch would find her, but now she wants him to leave because she is afraid he will be killed. He is shocked to realize that Aaron is her father but determined to find him and end this.

Meanwhile, Saint finds the house and enters the red barn at the back of the property. She enters and is struck by the memorable darkroom smell. She sees a photo of herself at 13, crying, and draws her gun, but Aaron overpowers her. Patch shoots Aaron in the head, killing him and saving Saint.

Saint and Patch embrace, and she lets him go, understanding that they have done the right thing even if it is outside the law. She promises to take care of Grace and Charlotte.

The FBI has started a nationwide investigation into Aaron’s murders, spanning 17 states and using the transcripts Patch left. Patch is on the run, and no one knows where he is. In Monta Clare, Sammy uses the paintings Patch has left to people to right various wrongs. He uses the money to give Nix’s house to Tooms and give Grace money to fix up her home, in which she wants to stay. Sammy has finally begun a romance with Mary Meyer, Misty’s mother, which was thwarted by her father and Franklin when they were at Harvard.

Saint visits the home of Theodore, her son she gave up for adoption. Though she doesn’t want to meet him, she gives his adopted mother, Candice, a check from one of Patch’s paintings. She also gives her a box of letters and photos. Candice tells her that Theodore keeps bees.

Charlotte has settled into life living with Saint and visiting her grandmother. She has begun painting and helping Sammy around the gallery and plans to go to Harvard and study law to help people who need it. One evening, after a show at the gallery, she and Saint return home to find a jar of purple honey on the porch. Saint realizes it is a gift—and a message—from Patch.

Two weeks before college starts, Saint and Charlotte take a cross-country road trip to find Patch. They visit the honey farm and find no trace of him but speak to a man with a bumper sticker that has a pirate on it. He explains it is from the Outer Banks, where the famous pirate Edward Teach hid out. They journey down the shore of the region and, at last, see Patch on a sailboat. He embraces Charlotte, and the two spend the night on his boat with him. He shows Saint a painting of the two of them—the first he’s painted—as children, the pirate and beekeeper.